From 0 to 10, what grade does the State Budget deserve? 11 commentators make the assessment and the majority give it positive (but the average does not reach 6)
TERESA VIOLANTE
Use: 4
Potential unconstitutionalities in OE 2025
The proposal leaves unchanged two taxes on which the threat of (more) unconstitutional decisions hangs: the extraordinary contribution on the energy sector (CESE) and the additional solidarity on the banking sector (ASSB). In both cases, taxes were created in exceptional contexts, to deal with supposedly temporary situations.
A prudent budget legislator must consider situations of constitutional risk, especially when there are several STF decisions handed down in concrete inspection that decide in the direction of unconstitutionality. In the case of the ASSB, there is also a recommendation from the Ombudsman’s Office sent in September 2023 to Fernando Medina, explaining that he expressly refrained from triggering the intervention of the Constitutional Court to avoid a situation with harmful impacts on the Social Security Budget (the income from the ASSB reverts to the Social Security Financial Stabilization Fund). The recommendation went unanswered.
The STF seems to be losing patience with “breathless” tax legislation, whose provisional nature drags on over time. Pending litigation could lead not only to outcomes with direct impacts on the revenue to be collected in 2025, but also to declarations of unconstitutionality that, in the absence of restriction of effects, could cause serious damage to budget execution. Just think that, between 2021 and 2023, CESE represented more than R$300 million for the State coffers.
Teresa Violante is a constitutionalist, professor and researcher.
